Honest question. Do you think the GNOME project is as healthy today as it was, say, 4 years ago? Benjamin Otte explains that no, it isn't. GNOME lacks developers, goals, mindshare and users. The situation as he describes it, is a lot more dire than I personally thought.

If you don't like how much RAM a modern DE uses then you should probably use a non-modern one. There are perfectly valid, technical reasons for using RAM, like e.g. supporting languages and scripts not based on our Roman left-to-right connotation, supporting multiple kinds of input devices and so on.

- User: Open this folder.
- Desktop: Let me make a cute animation before, that will eat your battery and make you wait a little bit more.

Animations are inherently useful as they can steer one's attention to a point of interest, they may provide extra insight into what is happening, and often without an animation you wouldn't even know if the computer is doing what you directed it to do.

- User: Delete this file.
- Desktop: Your current virtual user is not the same as the one that owns this file, and I don't know whether you know her password, and I won't ask you for it either. Instead I'll let you know that "You don't have permission to delete this file".

I agree only partially: the system should ask for the credentials of the owner file/folder so that you can perform tasks on it, but that's all the system should do. It should not let you access stuff that doesn't belong to you and it should make the fact of it not belonging to you so bleeding obvious that even Average Joe would understand it.